Another Vanished Name

Today’s blog is about another name that we don’t find anymore in the East Perry County area…….Grother. Today would have been the 145th anniversary of Johann Heinrich Ludwig Grother and Emilie Christiane Palisch. Their anniversary was September 7, 1871.

The Grother name became part of the settlement in Perry County by joining the immigrant group that had arrived in St. Louis. There was a small group of people that has been described as the “Additions in St. Louis” in Zion on the Mississippi. These Grothers came down the river with the rest of the immigrants who settled here. Johann’s father, Heinrich, was about 20 years old at that time. His grandparents, Lütje and Anna Grother, came here with Heinrich and a daughter named Anna.

Johann was born in 1846 and baptized by Rev. Gotthold Loeber at Trinity Lutheran Church.

Johann Grother baptism record – Trinity, Altenburg

When the split in the Trinity congregation happened in 1857, both the Grother and Palisch families became charter members of the new Immanuel Lutheran Church congregation. Emilie Palisch was the first grandchild of the J.G. Palish talked about in The Palisch Patriarch, and the sister of the Hulda Palisch mentioned in The Wonder Man. Here is a photo of Johann and Emilie Grother.

Johann and Emilie (Palisch) Grother

The Grother land can be found on a 1915 land ownership map. Here is a photo of a portion of that map. You can see John Grother’s name just northwest of Altenburg along what is now called Y Road or Ridge Road.

John Grother land record 1915

In order to see what happened to the Grother name, we need to look at what happened to Johann’s sons. There were eight children, but only two of them were sons, Heinrich Conrad and Carl Friedrich. Heinrich remained single all his life, living with his single sister, Sara for many years. So there are no Grothers coming from him. Carl Friedrich married Ernestine Oehlert and moved his family to Kansas. They were already having children in Kansas in 1908.

Here is a photo taken when Johann and Emilie Grother celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.

Grother 50th Anniversary

There are a lot of Grother relatives in this photo, but the way I have it figured, the only Grothers from Altenburg in this photo were Johann, Emilie, and the two single children, Heinrich and Sara. The last Grother to live around Altenburg was Sara who died in 1953 and is buried in the Immanuel Cemetery. My guess is that Sara is the woman in the back row in the striped dress, and Heinrich is the gentleman to her left (I do not see a wedding ring on his finger).